1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of computer software, and more particularly to protocol generating software for generating software components from a formal specification.
2. Description of the Problem to be Solved
The Java™ Debug Wire Protocol (JDWP) (Java™ and related marks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc.) is a protocol for communicating between a debugger application and a Java Virtual Machine (target VM). By implementing the JDWP, a debugger can either work in a different process on the same computer, or on a remote computer. Since Java™ programming applications may be implemented across a wide variety of different hardware platforms and operating systems, the JDWP facilitates remote debugging across a multi-platform system. In contrast, many prior art debugging systems are designed to run on a single platform and must generally debug only applications running on the same or similar platform.
Typically, a debugger application is written in the Java programming language and the target side is written in native code. In a reference implementation of JDWP, a front-end debugger component is written in Java and a back-end reference implementation for the target VM is written in C. Both pieces of code need to be compliant with a detailed protocol specification, or the reference system will fail. What is needed is some mechanism to assure that both the front-end and back-end code portions are truly compatible with the protocol specification and with each other.
Languages exist for the specification of inter-process/object communication, such as the Interface Definition Language (IDL) which is part of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), developed by the Object Management Group (OMG). These languages are compiled (i.e. by an IDL compiler) to produce stubs for the client side of communication and skeletons for the server side. However, such languages are not directed to the problems associated with generating protocol compliant debugger code.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method for generating both the front-end code and the back-end code for a debugger directly from a detailed specification.